Computer Science (AS & A Level) · May / June 2023 · Paper 23 · Question 8

A computer shop assembles desktop computers, using items bought from several suppliers. A text file Stock.txt contains information about each item. Information for each item is stored as a single line in the Stock.txt file in the format: <ItemNum><SupplierCode><Description> Item information is as follows: Format Comment ItemNum 4 numeric characters unique number for each item in the range “0001” to “5999” inclusive SupplierCode 3 alphabetic characters code to identify the supplier of the item Description a string a minimum of 12 characters The file is organised in ascending order of ItemNum and does not contain all possible values in the range. The programmer has defined the first program module as follows: Module Description ChangeSupp() • called with two parameters Code1 and Code2 of type string that represent valid supplier codes • creates a new file NewStock.txt from the contents of the file Stock.txt where any reference to Code1 is replaced by Code2 • returns a count of the number of items that have had their supplier code changed

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